A cellular telephone or other portable device is a ubiquitous tool in today's modern age of communication and technology. For example, a cellular telephone allows a user to perform many important functions ranging from emailing, Short Message Servicing (SMS) and sending photos, to name but a few. However, for all of its features and conveniences, the cellular telephone still has many of its own shortcomings.
By way of illustration, a cellular telephone includes an address book which can store hundreds of entries. But, to access these entries can be a very tedious and time consuming task, e.g., performing look-ups, due to inefficiencies in current methodologies and systems. For example, to gain access to a name for the purpose of dialing, emailing, SMS'ing, sending photos, etc., involves typing on limited keyboard input mechanisms which generally require multi-tap input methods. Multi-tap refers to the method for inputting letters on a keypad which only has 10 general number input keys. In these cases, the number keys double as letter equivalents for certain functions.
In one example of multi-tap, since there are nine physical keys and 26 alphabetical characters, most keys serve as input mechanisms for three to six letters and sometimes as many as eight. And, in these methodologies, the cellular telephones have universal mappings, e.g., with the “2” key serving as the entry point for a, b, c, A, B, and C. Below is the typical mapping:
Key NumberLetter Mapping2abc3def4ghi5jkl6mno7pqrs8tuv9wxyz
In this mapping scheme, if a user wants to enter the name “Smith,” for example, it will require a sequence of keys as follows: 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 (cycle twice to get an upper case “S”) 6 4 4 4 8 4 4. Obviously, this requires a total of 15 keys pressed with the existing multi-tap method. And if all uppercase letters are desired then it will take an unwieldy 31 characters.
T9® text entry is an attempt to reduce the number of keys required to enter a name by employing a dictionary of common words. In this methodology, T9 software combines groups of letters found on each telephone key with a database of words in an attempt to recognize text. As an example, a user would just type the corresponding key once and move on to the next key, while the T9 dictionary attempts to guess the intended word.
More specifically, a user can enter the word “how” with only three key presses: 4-6-9, without the need to press a single key multiple times. This methodology has some success for some word combinations but for a very many words it misses the intended word because there are so many variations. For example, the word “cat” “bat” and “act” all use the same key combination of 2/2/8. In these cases, the T9 software can show the user the most commonly used word first. If the word desired is not the first presented word, T9 system then allows for scrolling through all the possible words that match and portions of words that start with the combination of key presses. In the case of this example there are 8 different words or word portions to scroll through If the T9 system does not recognize the word being entered, it is necessary then to switch to the multi-tap methodology. Words commonly not recognized by the T9 system are first and last names and therefore not optimal for address book entry/lookup.
In other methodologies, most current cellular telephones will sort address book names alphabetically and will remove all other names not matching the current key sequence typed in by the end user. This will help narrow down the list of available choices without having to type the whole name. This methodology, though, also has its drawbacks by not allowing the user to efficiently search and find frequently used numbers, etc.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.